Lord help us, she’s back and she’s in her pink alf shirt

Not that I actually own one, but you know….

So, I more or less (more, really) have been neglecting this blog as teaching has taken up like 99.7% of my time (the other 0.3% is eating and sleeping). But I am back with a vengeance now. Or something?

I re-piqued my blogging interest as I started to organize my “New Year Goal” blog…no, it’s not about getting skinny….it’s about reading! So here I was on the old wordpress.com and thought, HEY, I SHOULD REALLY BLOG AGAIN. (yes, it was in all caps as my inner voice yelled at myself.)

So, here goes something. (?!)

I want to talk about MOVIES, or more specifically, The Princess and the Frog

I have noticed that my Disney Princess Post still remains my most popular post to date, so let’s talk about something Disney has done RIGHT. Or at least half right.

Oooh, it's pretty!

The Princess and the Frog! Without getting all googly eyed at the pretty dresses and what not, I want to first take a minute to applaud the resurrection of the “classic Disney formula” which, for all intents and purposes, has been: dazzling animation + catchy tunes + charming prince ™ + buxom, scrappy beauty = $$$$. And while Tiana certainly is scrappy, she is a little less….um, Disneyfied for a Disney Princess. Her main goal, all along, is to work hard and open a resturant, as her dearly departed FATHER (not mother, for a change!) inspired her to do. So we see our plucky heroine working her tail off at various jobs, getting turned down for a real estate deal (implied racism), as well as going down the bayou with another frog, an alligator, and a toothless cajun firefly.

Pretty standard fair.

That said, I think it had a few great things….

1) We see the privileged white girl (Lottie?) sacraficing for the WOC for a change

2) Emphasis on both hard work AND love ( both family and romantic)

3) Fun little soundtrack

But, then there were a few issues….

Didn’t love some of the more racial characterizations of animals, like the firefly and the alligator. And the potrayal of voodoo was, at best, inaccuarate.
I think I have more to say, but my hands are FREEZING. Coming soon, I will take on Lady Gaga (along with my love for her)

Why I want to be spoiled on Valentine’s Day

I am going to be completely honest here. Yes, when I am single I am bitter about Valentine’s Day. But I have been with the BF for almost two years now. Last year was very romantic. I cooked us dinner, we ate to candlelight, and danced to a romantic slow dance mix I made, exchanged gifts (I made him a book with 100 reasons why I loved him, complete with pictures and so on.)

This year….well, I told David I wanted flowers, stuffed animals, go out to dinner, a gift, blah blah blah.

And I know this should probably be setting off feminist alarm bells…but let’s face it. This is all wound up in some of my middle/high school pain. During those tender, tender years, I was the girl who never ever ever EVER got candy grams or flowers or gifts or balloons or any of that shit. I got to watch all of the more romantically-inclined girls prance up and down the hallways with their arm-fulls of loot while I slugged along on the gray February day, spitting venom about how I didn’t want a relationship anyway and how Valentine’s Day and all of its partakers were shallow…..

Well you know what? I don’t care if it’s shallow or not. I want flowers. I want dinner. I want a teddy bear. And I want to celebrate with the romantic trappings that I was denied through my adolescence because I was an awkward bird. So here I am, 22, and I want to have a silly holiday. Now, if Ionly I could prance up and down the halls of my old high school.

I can’t be blamed….can I?

Do you want to help out my students?

I know I have SUCKED at updating. Teaching just makes me so freaking busy!!!

Which brings me to this………

My kids need calculators. Bad. I have a page up on Donor’sChoose.org and I am asking any one who can spare a couple bucks to please donate to my cause. Please.

Thank you.

Love from,
Kacie

How I see everyday that abstinence-only sex “education” does not work

We all know that abstinence only is a big fat joke. It is the opposite of education. Education is about teaching people. Abstinence-only is about hiding information and doling out little tidbits of inflated scare-tactic stats in order to help “support” the argument that sex is best saved for holy matrimony and any other way is a big fat life threatening sin. Well guys, it’s no surprise that it really doesn’t work. In fact, it’s the opposite of working. It anti-works. Take for example the school system I work in. Abstinence only to the core. Yet when I judged senior projects, one of the girls did hers on teen-pregnancy. She herself had a baby at 16 and had interviewed upward 20 girls from our high school that had kids. Over 20. Over 20. Over 20. And when I asked about her about her pregnancy and what she had found from the girls she interviewed and how they got pregnant, she said 2 very poignant things. That they either did not know about methods of birth control or they did, but their boyfriends pressured them to not use it. Hello folks! Don;t you think that ACTUAL SEX EDUCATION might help these girls?

Of course, I have my own theories. The county I work in is predominantly African American. It should come as no surprise that the pregnancy rate is higher among black students than white students. I honestly, in my heart of hearts, believe that White America (ya know, those who run almost everything) isn’t concerned about black unwed teenage mothers because a) it’s what they’d expect and b) it’s what they want. If all those single black girls are too busy raising kids and all the black men are in jail, than they won’t be moving into white neighborhoods, working at our businesses, and dating our precious kids. Of course, they do have black friends, though, but they just “act so white.”

Truly, I think that keeping sex ed out of schools hurts the poor and colored populations more and is part of an elaborate network designed to keep the bulk of the African American population down.

Nothing tickles my fancy more….

Than being attacked by another “so-called” feminist.

How about writing a post on how people who can only see binary options tend to be slightly freaky morons incapable of seeing nuanced and subtle distinctions?

Jesus, girl child, you are retarded.

I would like to drwa your attention to the final line. I didn’t know that name calling was part of being a feminist! I didn’t know that infantilization of other women is part of feminism! I certainly didn’t know that using slang derived from the oppression of people with disabilities was part of wanting EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN. I especially take offense to this considering I teach Special Education.

Thank you, thank you Feminazi for showing me the light!!!

 

White privilege is turning a blind eye

So, I opened my big stupid mouth on facebook and commented on a note from an aquiantince that was her reaction to the election. A lot of it focused on seflish people wanting rich people’s money. Now, as someone who works in a very poor community made up mostly of people of color, I was higly offended by this notion. A lot of my students’ lives right now are HOPELESS. Anyway, I responded, as eloquently as possible, explaining how when you work in a community where welefare is the only the thing that puts food on the table (if any) that it is difficult to just dismiss recipiants of welfare and other financial assitant programs as “lazy.” So I threw in four examples of my students and the lives they lead to show, no, not all people who use welfare are just in line for “handouts” and it is not always possible to simply pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Sometimes people are in situations through no doing of their own: case in point, female student in my program has a child because she was raped by her father. She gets welfare to feed her baby. Is she lazy?

So the real point is, this acquaintince of mine responded with that there was no need for “stories” and that I should retract what I said since she too worked with the poor and apologized for cateogrically calling them lazy.

To which I say is this. It is a neat little beautiful thing to be able to live in the shining white bubble that is a state university, to be getting a great education, to maybe have a job on the side to pay for your weekend binges or if you are somehow more “resiliant” your own rent, and call this a struggle while dismissing other experiences as stories that somehow have no place in “intellectual debate” because let’s face it, they make privileged people uncomfortable.

Well, to everyone who is uncomfortable with my stories: GET OVER IT. I am uncomfrotable too. But not for the same reason. I am uncomfortable because on the other side of town, rich white kids live in country club mansions and go to private school. I am uncomfortable because mmost of my kids’ only meal is the one they get at school. I am uncomfortable because I have high schoolers who didn’t know the earth revolved around the sun, didn’t know how many days are in a week, didn’t know how to add or subtract without their fingers, and didn’t know that no, a baby does not grow in your stomach, even though most of them have kids. I am uncomfrotable because the privileged would rather turn a blind eye to the rest of the world’s suffering than to admit than to admit that something is wrong, or even worse, to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

Everyone should be angry. I know I am.

How an atheist is a better christian than most christians

Anyone that knows me should know that I am an atheist. I was raised without religion. I would even dare to say that I was raised anti-religion.

So tell me, though I am not familiar with him myself, and do not by any means claim to be an expert on the christian religion, how is that I, a good old hell-bent atheist, ended up a better christian than 90% of the christians I know? Now, I am not talking about the get-out-of-jail-free-card sort of southern baptist brand of christainity or Jerry Falwell and the Church of Hate either. I am talking about WHAT JESUS WOULD WANT. Now, of course, no one can really be sure. But from what I’ve read and what I’ve picked up, I feel….

Jesus would want us to help each other.
Jesus would want us to give away our money.
Jesus would want us to sacrifice our time to the needy.
Jesus would want us to not judge others.

Jesus would not want to punish people for loving one another.
Jesus would not want to ruin people’s lives.
Jesus would not want to give more money to the rich.

Now listen up. Compare me to most christians. My job is teaching special education in a poor community. I deal with the kids everyone gives up on. I give up a good, oh, 12 hours of my day to these kids, sometimes more. I spend hundreds of dollars on my classroom every month, just to get my kids supplies.

Look at all these wounded “christain”‘ republicans. They bitch and moan about gay marriage. Really? You think Jesus wants to condemn people who want to love eachother? Really? They give more thought to saving the “life” of an unborn fetus than they do to –innocent civilians in Iraq –hungry people here in our country and all over the world or –those babies that are already born without homes. Really? Jesus loves those fetuses! They want hard-working millionaires and other privileged populations to not have to “give up” all of their income that they deserve. Really? Actually, it’s easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. Or so your pal Jesus once said.

Here is my take on it: it is so much easier to wrap up “pro-life” and “protecting the sanctity of marriage” and condemn sinners (when it’s convenient) and forgive others (when that fits your agenda) and call it christian morals than it is to actually BE A CHRISTIAN. It is so much easier to do what they do, than to get up every morning and try to do the impossible, to really help people, like I do every day.

So really, roll around in your money, got to church every Sunday, condemn those you hate and fear, piss and moan about taxes, and call yourself a fucking christian. I will be laughing my ass off when the god I do not believe in let’s me into heaven before he let’s you.

(please note I did not capitalize “christian” for stylistic and personal reasons.)

If you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it

or: Why I hate engagement rings

Disclaimer: This is a very heteronormative post as I am woefully ignorant of other marriage/union traditions.

So, something is in the air here in the good old south that is seducing my friends and family into getting engaged. And I think getting married at young age gets its own post, but here I want to focus on the sexist tradition of engagements, particualry engagement rings.

I think engagement rings are bad for both men and women.

They are bad for women because they a) encourage us to compete with eachother to see whose “rock” is bigger, better, and more expensive. b) it reeks of ownership. Only women wear engagement rings. As in: this engagement involves the woman more than man. This engagement entitles him to her. He has ownership of her. She is betrothed to him.

I think anything that fuels competition between women that has nothing to do with actual personal acomplishment (like the price of a gift) trivilizes our actual acomplishments. Has anyone noticed the showers of congradulations and wishes women get over a proposal as opposed to a job related success?

Why they are bad for men: a) they reinforce and normalize the “golddigger” stereotype which hurts men (and women). b) Men do not wear engagement rings, though they are 50% of the relationship. This is jsut one more drop in the bucket of feminizing love and emotions. I am sick and tired of the idea that men are emotionless and that feelings are for girls (and fags). And this just cements it. It suggest, no, screams that women are in relationships while men stand somewhere on the outer fringe.

FINALLY: Engagement rings are useless. Why spend $1,000s on something that is really, in the end, decorative with no functional purpose when you can spend that money on something you can actually USE.

I have already told my boyfriend in the event we decide to join in unholy matrimony, firstly, I will be prosing with an egagement guitar. That’s right. A gift he’d actually want.

I was tagged. My Eight homes?

I guess this is a thought expereiment to put us in the shoes of the McCains? You choose 8 homes, you can say why if you want. They have to be in the borders of the United States. Then you tag 8 people. I am going to cheat and tag my whole family in the family blog. There are 8 of them. HA!!

1. Portland: My roommate at induction was from there and it just seemed SO FREAKIN SWEEET.

2. New Mexico:

3. South Dakota: both 2 and 3 have the same reason–I’d like to live on two different American Indian reservations.

4. Somewhere in Florida, near the gulf: um beaches. HELLO

5. New York, New York: the orginal birthing place of Ms. Versaci

6. Denver

7.Boston

8: Providence: I am very attracted to such a small state.

More on costumes

This just in:

My 5-year-old sister is dressing up as a muscley Spiderman.

Love it.